I don't remember Neil Hannon being quite so... literally... Scott Walker--seriously, I feel like this record should be called _Scott 8_--it's as if Walker had followed the path of his first few records further instead of going in the _Tilt_ direction. Orchestral, grand, deep like the Orchestral Grand Canyon (you know, the version they arranged in the early '90s for people who'd bought the remastered CD version of the original Grand Canyon but wanted something with more strings). Not a bad thing at all: it doesn't seem derivative as such as much as it seems like an example of the genre created by Walker, which it just happens nobody has really treated as a genre before. Loses a little bit of gas toward the end, but I'm gonna be going over this one again to see which songs stick with me most--there will be some.